The new metagame and brainstorming

Lugia LEGEND - The BCIF(s)

Hello everyone!

In today’s entry, I’ll just talk about random things and this will also be the only entry of the week. The first reason for this is that I’ll have my Nationals this weekend. The second reason for this is that I just began my summer internship. And at the same time, I’ll need to read for my entrance exams as well. So, yeah, I got lots to do.

I’ll playtesting heavily for Nationals this last week and I hope I can come up with my 6^th National Championship title after this weekend. I haven’t decided my deck yet but I’m sure that whatever deck I’m choosing to Nationals, I’ll comfortable with it. If you’re having Nationals in the next few weeks, that’s something I recommend everyone doing – it doesn’t matter what you play – as long as you’re comfortable with it.

First tournaments with the new format

You’ve probably followed the results from the first week of Battle Roads and Norway’s Nationalchampions. If we look at the BR Results, we see nothing too surprising. Darkrai has been doing well in different variations as expected but at the same time CMT and Eels are still going strong. There is just one top tier deck more but nothing too dominating. Pure fighting decks have also had some decent success in metagames, where CMTs haven’t been that popular.

Norway’s Nationals is a big and remarkable tournament unlike Battle Roads. So the results of that tournament should matter. However, I think the finalist decks of the Masters took everyone by surprise. The final in Masters was a mirror between Darkrai EX/Terrakion EX/Mewtwo EX deck. A deck that has a good match-ups against anything else but CMT. CMT is a top tier deck, so why didn’t CMT do good in Norway’s Nationals? The reason for this is pretty simple – it was almost non-existent in their metagame.

The new sets along with big tournaments makes people usually very creative. As much as I love creativity and rogue decks, I’m not a huge fan of those in National Championships. If you’re a competitive player, you should be playing the BEST deck in the format, not the funny new deck that just can’t be higher than tier2. I think this is exactly what happened in Norway (and what I expect happen in Finland as well). People get creative and want to try new things thanks to new set but the fact is, now isn’t the time for that! There were decks like Electrode/Terrakion and Empoleon/Terrakion on top cuts of Norway. As we all should know, CMT has an almost autowin match-up against decks like that. CMT pretty much autowins anything with Terrakion as a main attacker. However, people were (and are) afraid of Darkrai EX, so Terrakion is very popular. In my opinion the funniest part is that even though the metagame was orientated against Darkrai EX, a Darkrai EX deck WITHOUT a decent Fighting counter won the tournament. Was it because Darkrai EX is the BCIF, the players got lucky or just because the deck was new? We’ll never know but one thing is for sure – one tournament (even though it’s big) tells a 1% of the truth in the format. Another good example for this would be Canadian Nationals last year.

There has also been some crazy rogues around BRs. However, these decks usually have something that connects them. Most rogue deck take an advantage of the metagame’s biggest weakness – Fighting. There has been as crazy decks as Lugia LEGEND/Terrakion doing well. Also, anything with Groudon EX goes as well, it’s fighting and fighting weaknesses are very usual.

Here’s the tournament winning Lugia LEGEND decklist, if you haven’t seen it yet. You can also check the tournament report here.

Pokémon:

3x Terrakion NVI
2x Smeargle
2x Shaymin UL
2-2x Lugia LEGEND
=11

Trainer:

4x Juniper
3x N
2x Random Receiver
4x Junk Arm
4x Legend Box
3x Dual Ball
3x Switch
3x Super Scoop Up
3x Super Rod
2x Pokemon Catcher
2x Exp. Share
=33

Energy:

4x Rainbow Energy
3x Fire Energy
3x Water Energy
3x Lightning Energy
3x Fighting Energy
=16

I’m pretty speechless about this deck and  doubt it’s consistency but hey – it won a tournament so I’m no one to criticize the deck.


Conclusion

I know, I know – this entry was way shorter than usual but yeah, I’m busy. I hope you enjoyed it and that my brainstorming about the metagame could help everyone out a bit. As said, this will be my first and only entry of the week. I hope everyone will have a great week and good luck in your tournaments next weekend!

The next update will be my Nationals’ report.

Wish me luck for my Nationals so I can provide you a Nationals’ winning decklist and bring home a 6^th National Championship title!

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment anything!